Powel Mesh – advanced analysis for power producers

Real-time analysis, insight, competitive advantage and genuine savings. Powel launches Powel Mesh, an agile and flexible platform that handles your data, now and in the future.

The energy market is undergoing substantial changes. The amount of renewable energy produced is rapidly increasing and often comes in the form of distributed small-scale production units. Meanwhile, larger, central production units are closing down, such as gas and nuclear power plants. Accurate and up-to-date information on, for example, weather conditions and consumption in a larger geographic market, becomes crucial in order to act efficiently. At the same time, margins are challenged, as the price of electricity generally remains low.

One consequence of these changes is that power producers and traders have an increasing amount of data, such as time series and algorithms to consider. As a result, more and more effort is spent on time consuming data processing, whilst the market moves toward more real-time operations and trading. Acting quickly on new information gives you a competitive edge, the closer to real-time, the better.

Powel announced today the launch of Powel Mesh in response to these challenges facing the industry. Mesh handles increased amounts of data in a time saving and secure manner, and gives you a better overview of your data. The solution ensures that a power producer’s skilled and competent employees can spend more time and knowledge on analysis and on creating value for the business rather than data processing.

The solution is a direct result of an innovation initiative with Statkraft. Other key customers are now in a pilot phase to put Mesh into operative use for power production. The software, formerly known as Big Data Manager (BDM), was relaunched as Powel Mesh during Powel Days last autumn.

“BDM was a solution name with too many limitations,” explains Arnt Sollie, VP for Smart Energy in Powel. “The platform can handle enormous amounts of data and it can handle it fast, but it does so much more than that.”

Mesh is a platform for the Smart Energy solutions that looks to the future and is a backdrop for the domain applications. For a power producer, Mesh provides the opportunity to discover critical factors that may affect physical and commercial conditions for their assets at an earlier stage, for instance by avoiding production losses or by acting at the speed needed to effectively trade in intraday markets.

The amount of data, such as time series with or without mathematical estimations, is increasing and the demand for more accurate time resolutions is the result of increasingly “unregulated” production. Experiences from our innovation project has demonstrated that Mesh can reduce the amount of stored time series by between 40% and 90%. Additionally, there is a large reduction in the amount of calculation expressions needed for advanced analytics and reporting.

“In order to perform efficient operational analyses, the user needs a solution that meets several demands. The solution must focus on important data and filter out noise, maintain consistency in the data and estimations, and have a processing core with high performance. Mesh gives the customer the opportunity to create their own data model that acts in accordance with how they relate to their data,” explains Sollie.

By creating their own data model, or information structure, the user knows intuitively how to navigate. The relationship created in the model will be used for template calculations, and ensures that the company can get rid of a large number of template reports linked to specific data. This means consistent estimations, fewer errors and significantly lower maintenance of estimations.

The amount of data an energy producer has access to will only continue to increase due to a larger number of sensors, more frequent and detailed prognoses and closer to real-time time resolutions. Furthermore, there is substantial growth in several markets creating more complex market situations, increasing pressure on balancing markets ancillary services, and heightened activity in intraday trading.

“Mesh is a solution which is both flexible and supports future challenges,” says Sollie. “It is a complex and powerful tool for analysis, yet it is easy to use. We are currently developing a Powel Mesh Connector that will allow the end user to use Microsoft Powel BI as a reporting tool on top of Powel Mesh. This will allow the users a quick transition from Excel to a more powerful system for analysis.”

Powel Mesh will be available as a cloud solution via Microsoft Azure as well as installed at the customer.

About PowelPowel AS, headquartered in Trondheim, Norway, delivers business-critical software solutions and related services specifically designed to help energy companies and public utilities improve daily operational processes and service quality. The company is a market leader in software for generation, trading and logistics, smart metering, grid maintenance, and water management solutions, with offices in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Turkey and Switzerland. Founded in 1996, Powel AS is a privately held company with more than 380 employees. www.powel.comwww.powel.com